Cultural relativism

Cultural relativism is a principle that was established as axiomatic in anthropo

logical research by Franz Boas in the first few decades of the 20th century and
later popularized by his students. Boas first articulated the idea in 1887: "...
civilization is not something absolute, but ... is relative, and ... our ideas a
nd conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes."[1] However, Boas
did not coin the term.
The first use of the term recorded in the Dictionary was by philosopher and soci
al theorist Alain Locke in 1924 to describe Robert Lowie's "extreme cultural rel
ativism", found in the latter's 1917 book Culture and Ethnology.[2] The term bec
ame common among anthropologists after Boas' death in 1942, to express their syn
thesis of a number of ideas Boas had developed. Boas believed that the sweep of
cultures, to be found in connection with any sub species, is so vast and pervasi
ve that there cannot be a relationship between cultures and races.[3] Cultural r
elativism involves specific epistemological and methodological claims. Whether o
r not these claims necessitate a specific ethical stance is a matter of debate.
This principle should not be confused with moral relativism.
Herodotus (Histories 3.38) observes on the relativity of mores (?????):
"If anyone, no matter who, were given the opportunity of choosing from among
st all the nations in the world the set of beliefs which he thought best, he wou
ld inevitablyafter careful considerations of their relative meritschoose that of h
is own country. Everyone without exception believes his own native customs, and
the religion he was brought up in, to be the best; and that being so, it is unli
kely that anyone but a madman would mock at such things. There is abundant evide
nce that this is the universal feeling about the ancient customs of one's countr
y." (tr. Aubrey de Selincourt)
He mentions an anecdote of Darius the Great who illustrated the principle by inq
uiring about the funeral customs of the Greeks and the Callatiae, peoples from t
he extreme western and eastern fringes of his empire, respectively. They practic
ed cremation and funerary cannibalism, respectively, and were each dismayed and
abhorred at the proposition of the other tribe's practices.
The epistemological claims that led to the development of cultural relativism ha
ve their origins in the German Enlightenment. The philosopher Immanuel Kant argu
ed that human beings are not capable of direct, unmediated knowledge of the worl
d. All of our experiences of the world are mediated through the human mind, whic
h universally structures perceptions according to a priori concepts of time and
space.
Although Kant considered these mediating structures universal, his student Johan
n Gottfried Herder argued that human creativity, evidenced by the great variety
in national cultures, revealed that human experience was mediated not only by un
iversal structures, but by particular cultural structures as well. The philosoph
er and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt called for an anthropology that would synth
esize Kant and Herder's ideas.
Although Herder focused on the positive value of cultural variety, the sociologi
st William Graham Sumner called attention to the fact that one's culture can lim
it one's perceptions. He called this principle ethnocentrism, the viewpoint that
"ones own group is the center of everything," against which all other groups are
judged.